December sunlight sliced through the French doors and fell in a swath on my kitchen island. Home from taking the kids to school, I dropped my keys next to the sink and inhaled the silence of the empty house. Another day of rushing Rowan through his morning routine had me on edge. I regretted yelling at him when he was slow to get out of the car. I turned on the stove and a small flame erupted under the tea kettle. My cell phone rang, and I glanced at the screen. It was Summer, my friend and realtor who was working with Randy to help sell his house before it went into foreclosure.
“Kendall,” she said breathlessly. “I’m calling with the worst news.”
My mind invented a handful of scenarios in which the house sale fell through. Randy had barricaded himself in and refused to leave. The inspector had discovered some catastrophic structural damage. The whole place had burned down.
“The worst news,” her voice faltered. “I’m so sorry. Randy killed himself.”
The scene felt familiar. I had been bracing for it for years.
I grasped the countertop. Two glasses of raspberry smoothie sat where the kids had left them, a purple puddle at the base of one.
“I’m so sorry,” Summer was saying. She was crying. I envisioned her blonde hair, long and straight, rimmed with sunlight. She was the embodiment of her name, Summer. Bright and beautiful with an open smile of white teeth and red lipstick.
My peripheral vision narrowed.
“My kids,” I said, a chasm splitting my stomach.
“I know,” she replied. The tea kettle whistled from miles away. I stared at the stove, confused, then slowly switched it off.
“How did he do it?” I asked.
“He hung himself.”
My hands went numb.
“The inspector had an appointment at the house this morning,” she said, rushing. “He found Randy in the living room, saw him through the window in the front door.”
A slideshow reeled past my eyes, pictures that would never leave me. I wasn’t sad or angry or horrified, just dazed.
“That poor inspector,” I said, wondering if Randy had planned it so Karyn wouldn’t be the one to find him.
“He’s totally traumatized,” Summer said
“I should go up to the house,” I was pacing now, searching for my keys.
“No, don’t go up there. There’s nothing to do except stop and breathe. You have to take these moments of quiet before everything starts happening.”
I draped myself over the kitchen island, my arms on the cold wood, trying to inhale.
“He was such a gentle soul,” she said.
“You’re brave for making this call, Summer. I’d rather hear it from you than from the police.”
We hung up and the whole world had shifted. My mind searched for a place to land, as if scrolling through the static in search of a radio station. I couldn’t believe he had actually done it and succeeded. There was no way I could protect my kids from the news that would destroy their childhood. I looked at the clock on the stove. I had five hours to learn how to usher them through this catastrophe. I opened my laptop and Googled, how do you tell your kids that their father has died.
“Be prompt and straightforward,” it told me. “Avoid euphemisms. Use the word, dead. It avoids confusion and helps the grieving process.”
I left a message for Greg, “It’s important, can you call me back as soon as possible?”
My friend Karli came over and kept me company.
“Should I tell them it was suicide?” I asked Rowan’s therapist.
“Be truthful, Kendall. If you don’t tell them now, you’ll have to tell them later and that’s worse. You don’t want to make the subject taboo.”
“And if they ask me for any details? Like how he did it?”
“It’s best to answer their questions. Keep it simple and concise,” he said.
“I’m scared this will destroy them.”
“I don’t think it will. There’s research that says, having one solid parent is enough.”
“What do we do with ourselves now?”
“Let them decide. If they want to go to school, that’s really good. Maintaining continuity is key and the sooner they can resume their normal routine the better.”
This gave me an unlikely sense of confidence. While I was rehearsing what to say, there was a hollow knock on the door. I tugged it open to find a team of uniformed officers standing in a half circle.
“Are you here about Randy Laird?” I let them off the hook. They nodded. They introduced themselves. Officer Somebody, police, coroner, two victims’ advocates.
“May we come in?”
We sat on my gray sectional couch. I held onto the cushion with two hands the way you might hold the edges of a sled at full speed. It was soft, crushed velvet. Karli took the dog for a walk. In the kitchen my phone rang. I ignored it.
“Your name came up in the database. You were married to Randall?” the police confirmed.
“We were divorced,” I said.
They handed me pamphlets. They mentioned an autopsy, support groups, funeral homes, told me to contact social security.
The Christmas tree stood naked by the window, strings of lights on the floor.
The front door swung open. I stood up. Greg rushed into the foyer. I was surprised he had left work without even knowing why. He scanned the crowd with frantic eyes.
“I could tell by your voicemail that something was really wrong,” he said.
I took him by both hands and told him, “Randy has killed himself.”
He grabbed me in an abrupt and crushing embrace. The intensity felt suffocating. He came and sat down. I couldn’t retain one fact the somber team was telling me. Greg took notes. He gathered up the pamphlets. I let myself drift on the surreal tide. The victim’s advocate, a gawky gray-haired man kept patting my back as if a complete stranger’s affection would bring me any solace. It didn’t.
After they left, Greg made me a sandwich I couldn’t eat. I went to the kids’ rooms and got their favorite stuffed animals. I carried them to the living room and sat them on the couch. Then I decided that would be weird. They’d wonder why the animals had traveled downstairs. I tried hiding them under the throw pillows. I called a friend and asked her if she could drive the kids home from school. So that the car ride would seem normal, I didn’t explain why.
That afternoon I had to tell my kids that their father was dead. Greg asked if I wanted him to stay and I told him no, it had to be the three of us. I watched through the living room window as the carpool arrived. The grass was winter brown. The tree branches were brittle. Long shadows snaked over the yard. Chloe skipped toward the front door. Rowan dropped his backpack and raced to the trampoline for a quick backflip, and I thought, “This is the last moment they will ever be happy.”
They had just turned eleven years old.
I heard the front door unlatch and the dog’s toenails tapping in the hallway as he rushed to greet them.
“Hi, puppy,” Chloe sang out. Dog tags jingled.
“Hi guys, can you come to the living room?” I hollered. I was seated on the coffee table. My legs were clay. I wanted to apologize to Rowan for yelling at him that morning. What a terrible thing to do on the worst day of his life. Chloe plopped onto the couch with a smile. Rowan looked suspicious, as if he already sensed my dread. He turned to make his escape.
“Row, come back, I need to talk to you about something important,” I said.
He moved slowly to the couch and sat.
“I have some very difficult news,” I said.
Before I even began to unleash the rehearsed words, he covered his ears.
“No,” he said.
“Daddy has died,” I told them.
“No,” he yelled, his hands still pressed to his ears.
He came off the couch until he was kneeling on the rug and then screamed with pure agony. I have never heard anything so painful. Rowan sank to the floor in anguish and then tried to run from the living room. I caught him and gave him his teddy bear with the frayed nose. He embraced it and fell back onto the couch sobbing. In that moment, I hated Randy .
“We’re a team,” I told them. “We’re getting through this together.”
Chloe sat still, her eyes wide.
“Did he kill himself?” she asked in the smallest voice.
I nodded. She whimpered without tears. I moved to the couch and held out my arms. They leaned against me.
“Mommy, can we decorate the Christmas tree?” Rowan asked.
“Yeah,” I replied, surprised by the new mood.
The kids bolted from the couch and rummaged through a box of ornaments.
“This is my favorite one,” Chloe said. She held a guitar-playing rabbit.
Rowan picked up a black lab dressed as a firefighter.
Greg came home then and stood beside me without talking. I reached for his hand which was winter cold. When the tree was filled, it almost looked like a normal December day. Rowan hung his stocking on the mantle. Chloe slumped in a blue armchair.
“Mom, how did he do it?” she asked.
Something leapt in my abdomen, like a kick in utero. Rowan spun to face me. The Christmas tree had only been a short respite from the hazardous journey ahead.
Chloe was pacing the hallways of her mind, trying to make sense of the inconceivable. I was afraid of giving her information that could haunt her.
“Are you sure you want to know?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said with adult composure.
“No,” Rowan said.
How could I tell one, but not the other? If Chloe had to grapple with not knowing, her imagination would fill the gaps. Silence didn’t make an awful thing disappear, it just closed off any avenue to process it. I decided to trust her.
“Let’s talk,” I said to Chloe. She followed me into my office. My desk was piled with papers that seemed important yesterday.
I didn’t know if she was old enough to understand what it meant to hang oneself, so I sidestepped the details and said, “He did it with a rope.”
She nodded, looking at me steadily.
“Do you know what that means?” I asked.
She nodded again and asked, “Where?”
“In the living room.”
She breathed in and out.
“This sounds like a game of Clue,” I said, picturing the revolver, the lead pipe, the little plastic coiled rope.
“I’ll never think of that game the same way again,” she answered. And we laughed. Everything was shattered, but we laughed.
When she got quiet, I asked, “Are you OK?”
“Yes,” she assured me.
I thought to myself, there is no way she can actually be OK.